I have spent a couple days this week participating in activities at University of Toronto. It is particularly satisfying to be part of this advisory board.

On Monday, I delivered a lecture on telecom policy and regulation to the Executive Development Program – helping set the stage for a week of professional development for 51 executives from carriers and suppliers.

On Thursday, I was involved with advisory board meetings for the Master of Engineering in Telecom program. One of our key concerns was ensuring there will be continuing development of relevant talent for companies to recruit; an equal concern is ensuring that there will be a continued pool of newly created, entrepreneurial Canadian telecommunications companies to do the recruiting.

We are looking at some innovative projects to stimulate the pool of well qualified candidates for the Master of Engineering in Telecom programme and expand the breadth of scope for the program: call it MET 2.0. How would you approach the challenge of stimulating telecom career development on campus? I’ll report back as work continues.

As a conference organizer, I am used to seeing a bunch of competing corporate logos on the same sign or list of sponsors.

However, since the demise of the Stentor Alliance and the old Trans Canada Telecom System, it has been more unusual to see all of these rivalrous companies submitting joint comments. We are a little more used to collaboration on the wireless side and every so often we see a joint submission to appeal a decision. Last week’s cabinet appeal was noteworthy in that it was signed by the CEOs of TELUS, Sasktel, Bell and Aliant.

The level of cooperation reached a new post-Stentor high in the CRTC proceeding on the Do Not Call List. TELUS, Sasktel, MTS, Bell, Aliant, Norterntel, Northwestel and Telebec joined forces. Yes, even MTS was part of the club.

I understand that there are common issues and interests. But, the last time I looked, telemarketing was a sizable piece of business for these companies. Somehow, it just doesn’t look right for every single one of the carriers to be working together to jointly propose the best way to move forward on the operation of the DNCL, and the restraints to be imposed on their customers.

Similar forms of ‘rational competition’ strike me as limiting delivery of competitive benefits to consumers.

I know it saves costs if carriers combine their efforts. It would help profits if they agreed on prices as well.

In today’s post-Enron corporate governance and post-sponsorship government ethics, world of distrust of government, I think the public deserves the appearance of more independence between the competing factions.

When we assemble our agenda, we do our best to present the leading influencers of the Canadian Telecom industry at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

We are therefore pleased to announce that Pierre Blouin, CEO of MTS Allstream, will be leading MTS Allstream’s participation in this year’s event and delivering a keynote address on Tuesday June 13.

Preparations are continuing to move along well for The 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 12-14, in Toronto.

The cable industry will be better represented this year with Robert Depatie, President and CEO of Videotron speaking on June 14. Bill Linton returns for his 5th year with us, this time speaking as CFO of Rogers.

Robert, Pierre and Bill will balance incumbent telco sector keynote addresses by Michael Sabia of Bell and Darren Entwistle of TELUS.

Jeff Citron, Founder and Chief Strategist for Vonage will open the conference with a perspective from the new frontier of VoIP. Ron Spears, President of AT&T; Sales will close the first day, June 12 with a view from the US, and Mack Treece, President of Equant Americas also adds a global industry perspective.

We’ll hear telecom policy straight from the top with Industry Minister Maxime Bernier speaking on June 13 and CRTC Chair Charles Dalfen closing the conference on June 14.

The equipment supplier side is well represented. We also have Mitel founder Terry Matthews speaking in a keynote role as well as Don Peterson, CEO of Avaya, Hubert de Pesquidoux, head of Alcatel North America, Nikos Katinakis, CTO of Ericsson Canada, Michael Moskowitz of Palm, Tim Eckersley of Nokia, Gurdeep Singh Pall of Microsoft, Nortel’s new Chief Strategy Officer, George Riedel, Siemens’ Andreas Bernhardt and Cisco SVP Mike Volpi. Speaking on behalf of the new managed service players, we have HP’s Sebastiano Tevarotto.

The panels represent nearly 60 more industry leaders, many of whom would be keynote speakers at any other conference. You need to download the brochure to see the depth of speakers being presented.

There is no event like The Canadian Telecom Summit. Three days of unparalleled discussion and networking. A cocktail reception on Monday evening that will have a special high-tech enabled silent auction to crank it up a notch and we’re all heading downtown to watch the Blue Jays beat the Orioles on Tuesday evening.

We are proud that The Canadian Telecom Summit has become Canada’s leading industry gathering. More than 75% of the seats are already sold with 4 weeks to go. The past 3 years have been sold out, so book early!

No other event matches The Canadian Telecom Summit in the level of discussion, the opportunities for networking.

I don’t always agree with the CRTC’s decisions and I know they don’t always agree with my views either. I have written before that the sign of a balanced decision is an equal level of kvetching from incumbents, new entrants and consumer groups.

The Cabinet’s decision to have the CRTC revisit their VoIP Decision is a return to the way these things are supposed to work. Cabinet provides policy direction and leaves it to the CRTC to figure out how to address the issue in regulatory terms. It may signal a change in the way the industry is going to operate.

New blogger Michael Urlocker is advising people and companies on recognizing and responding to disruptive changes; try to imagine the amount of change that has been required for the evolution of the CRTC within government organizational and budget constraints, including minority governments, with the level of technology and global regulatory change over the past 15 years. Look at the Commission’s 3 year plan and you see a very full agenda.

This year’s closing speaker at The Canadian Telecom Summit will be CRTC Chair Charles Dalfen. Industry Minister Maxime Bernier will be speaking the day before with a response to the Telecom Policy Review panel’s recommendations. With his term coming to an end at the end of the year, it is fitting that Chairman Dalfen will get to deliver the final word.

Feeling confident in the wake of winning their VoIP appeal, Bell, TELUS, Sasktel and Aliant filed a joint appeal of the Local Forbearance Decision from the CRTC.

With all of the OpEds in the newspapers over the past few weeks, we knew an appeal was coming. The VoIP appeal took almost a year (including an election and new government to take power) for a decision. Today’s appeal asks for a response in 90 days.

Phone companies feeling frustrated? No question. But I think I would have slept on the press release overnight before sending it out. The language is a little harsh – especially for a combined company press release.

I just wonder what is to accomplished by using language in the press release like referring to the CRTC’s “inability or unwillingness to reform telecom regulation” and how “it is out of touch with today’s market realities.” Of course, the quotes are unattributed, so all four companies have ‘plausible deniability.’

We’re waiting to get confirmation that Barrett Xplore has also appealed a CRTC decision to the Cabinet. As we reported earlier, we expected the Deferral Account Decision to be appealed.¹

It all adds more gunpowder to the fireworks that we’ll be seeing next month at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

---

¹ Update: Barrett Xplore will be filing its appeal on Tuesday (May 16)